Before Star Wars, McCune was behind the great white shark model in 1975's Jaws, though uncredited.[1] McCune followed up Star Wars as chief modelmaker for the 1978 pilot of Battlestar Galactica and as a miniature supervisor for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in which he along with Dykstra and four others was nominated for a second Academy Award. Since then, he has worked on Caddyshack, Lifeforce, Spaceballs, Die Hard, Ghostbusters II, Speed, Red Planet, Spider-Man 2, and Serenity, some of which were done through his company Grant McCune Design. In all, McCune had designed or supervised special effects for over 100 films.

On December 27, 2010, McCune died at home from complications of pancreatic cancer.[3]